Photos: Charlie Watts's Guide to Dressing Like a Gentleman

"I got a love of clothes from my father," says Watts, who grew up in London; his dad drove a lorry, or truck, for the railroad . "He used to take me to his tailor. In those days, you'd have a little Jewish guy in the East End who made you things."

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Watts backstage in 1964, one year after he joined the Stones. Prior to that, he was in jazz and R&B bands. He helped popularize the buttoned-up-shirt, no-tie look amongst rockers—something he'd picked up from jazz musicians.

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Watts around 1964, when he was still drumming in suits.

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Watts on tour with the Stones in the '70s, wearing a super-suave double-breasted suit. All of his clothes are tailor-made. "While I love fashion, I have to adapt it to myself. Nothing fits because I'm too small."

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With the Stones in 2008: "I always felt totally out of place with the Stones," says Watts, with the band in 2008. "Not as a person, but the way I looked."

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"I have a very traditional and old fashioned mode of dress," says Watts, who appreciated the very personal, lived-in elegance of old Hollywood stars like Fred Astaire. For that reason, Watts will not work with stylists. "If you were Fred Astaire, you wore something and you wore it all day," he says. "The clothes weren't just put on you, which is what a stylist does."

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Watts's first love is jazz music, and once he got into it, as a teenager, he adopted the style of his favorite artists, like Billy Eckstine (left, circa 1940). "Eckstine favored really distinctive collars," says Watts. "Wonderful-looking man."

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"When we were growing up, jazz was the cool thing," says Watts. "The lovely thing about jazz guys in the fifties and sixties was that they were very handsome men, but also very stylish. When Miles Davis wore a green shirt on the cover of Milestones [1958], everyone had to have a green shirt."

"Dexter Gordon made a record called Our Man in Paris [1963]," says Watts, "and he wore a collar bar on the cover, which I now have hundreds of."

"I got a love of clothes from my father," says Watts, who grew up in London; his dad drove a lorry, or truck, for the railroad . "He used to take me to his tailor. In those days, you'd have a little Jewish guy in the East End who made you things."